Refugees: Mass Displacement
Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, wish to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for introducing this debate with his usual humanity and well-informed compassion. This debate calls for an international response to the shocking fact that, globally, 84 million people are displaced. It is a misery index of record proportions. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, and others documented the basis and root causes of so many of those people moving. People do not choose to leave their homes, extended families and communities unless they have very good reason.
As a human rights lawyer over many years, my work has taught me about inhumanity and the pain experienced by those at the receiving end. Like the noble Lord, Lord Alton, I have visited lots of the refugee camps where the wretched of the earth are collected: Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon and the Jordan camps, where people have fled from Syria. More recently, I have gone to Erbil to take testimonies from the Yazidi women who were raped and raped, over and over again. I saw girls who, having returned to their Yazidi families, had to abandon babies who would not be accepted by their communities because they had been produced as a result of the rapes by ISIL militia.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned my recent work. My young team—there were only four of us —worked to evacuate the women judges, lawyers and journalists from Afghanistan. It is shocking that the international community failed so greatly to do something that we ended up having to do. Why should a small group of people have to think, “How are we going to get these women judges out, who are on a Taliban kill list?” It should have been nations that came together and said, “What are we going to do? How do we evacuate? Who are we going to offer places to?”
That should have been done, and this emergency should have been prepared for. However, we are seeing a retreat from internationalism, and that is the difficulty when we call for an international response, because international collaboration is basically what will do the business of responding to these horrors. I recently read a lecture given just before Christmas by David Miliband, who was the director-general of the International Rescue Committee. I recommend it to everyone. He talks about the systems failure of states, diplomacy, humanitarian response and law.
It will not surprise noble Lords that I will highlight the business about the failure of law. A number of years ago, in 2013, I was involved in the creation of a report on climate change and human rights. It became so clear that we would create a sort of cauldron of people movement if we did not act promptly to the emergency of climate change, because people would be forced to move.
David Miliband speaks to the failure of diplomacy, the failure of peacekeeping, which we heard about from others, and the reduction in peace treaties. We used to work hard at creating these, but last year there were only seven efforts to create peace in conflicted areas.
On the failure of law, we have seen a retreat from international law. When the UN was inaugurated in 1945, Clem Attlee described the UN charter as
“our first line of defence”.
He meant that it would be our first line of defence against the abuse of power and that we were, of course, reminding everyone that the rights of people and individuals who suffer, not just the rights of states, are so important. The creation of that rules-based order is now under threat. So we need more internationalism. We need to enrich internationalism if there is to be an international response.
China: Genocide
Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
My Lords, it is with great respect for the noble Lord, Lord Alton, that I say that he has provided the most incredible leadership in this House on what is happening to the Uighur people at the hands of the Chinese authorities. I have all too often made speeches in this House about the full horrors of the human rights abuses that are taking place there. I am not going to rehearse them all again today, but we know that what is happening is certainly one of the most grievous kinds of human rights abuses. When we signed the convention on genocide, we were committing to preventing genocide taking place. So, when our Foreign Secretary indicated that she, too, took the view that there was a genocide in train—that it was processing—she was really talking about the very thing that is to be prevented under the genocide convention.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Alton, I too am frequently in contact with people who give me accounts of what is happening to their family members or what has happened to them. As a lawyer, I look for evidence. A report published by Dr Laura Murphy of Sheffield Hallam University—a very impressive academic who is rigorous in the material she uses and the evidence she applies to her work—has indicated that slave labour is being used in Xinjiang province, in the internment camps, and should be a source of serious alarm to us all. As well as writing Laundering Cotton, she has also written a very important report pointing out that 35-40% of the polysilicon used worldwide in the creation of solar panels is created in this province and in the factories and camps where forced labour is used.
Her most recent report is on cotton, and it points out that 20% of the world’s cotton emanates from Xinjiang province and that the way it is produced should be a source of deep alarm. She relied on the first-person testimonies of people who had been held and managed to escape, of those who work in the internment camps as security staff or teachers, and of relatives of those in the camps. They reveal that minority citizens held in those camps are “forcibly sent” to work as part of their daily schedules. Participation in labour programmes is not voluntary; it is coerced through threats of imprisonment, and torture has regularly been used.
People who are supposedly released or transferred from the camp system are often required as part of their release to work in co-located proximate factories or industrial park employment. Approximately 135 camps have these co-located factories, so people are released but have to work in the factories; there is compulsion to do so. In compelling people to work in these internment camps, the CCP has designated certain Uighur citizens as “surplus” labour. They are allowed to live outside the camps, but are forced into this form of employment, and that includes many people of retirement age.
Local governments are required to identify surplus labourers and compel them to take these jobs in factories. The surplus labour programmes affect nearly every minority family in the region. We know that this is a coercive system because the CCP explicitly argues that anybody who is not in vocational training or the right sort of economic condition has to be placed in these factories and in work. These transfers take place on a mass scale. If a Uighur person resists, a state-sponsored programme is put into play through which they are required to take part in the processes that bring them into the factories.
The details of the conditions in these factories are also shocking. There are razor wire fences, iron gates and security cameras. The surveillance is constant, and people are monitored by the police at all times.
The report by Laura Murphy makes it clear that people are paid either nothing or minuscule amounts, but then have deductions made from the small amount of money they might receive on the basis that they have to pay for their own transport and food. The food provided comes at great cost, so they end up with very little in the way of recompense for the work they do.
These are militarised working conditions. People are moved around the country. Young women are moved to places far from their own homes to work in factories. It is all part of what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, described, which is a way of disrupting a community. It has its culture removed from it and experiences serious human rights abuses. This is a genocide in progress, as the Foreign Secretary has said. I hope the House will take note of that as we go forward.
Belarus: Roman Protasevich
Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]
The noble Baroness raises an enormously important point in relation to free media and civil society. As co-chair, with Canada, of the Media Freedom Coalition, the UK unequivocally condemns the attacks on free media, including the targeting, harassment and detention of journalists and media workers, which we have seen a fair bit of. We have increased financial support to independent media organisations and civil society; for example, in the last financial year we provided £1.5 million, and this year a further £1.8 million. Our funding provides training for journalists and supports media workers who have been detained by the authorities. Our support includes a joint UK-Poland initiative designed to help independent media counter disinformation.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I am glad to hear the Minister refer to the media freedom project, which Britain has played a core role in. Special visas for journalists at risk, like the journalist who has been arrested here, would be an important step forward. I really want to press the Government on the use of targeted sanctions. There are a number of people who have not been included; for example, Mikhail Gutseriev is a hugely rich oligarch who lives in London, has premises here and is funding Lukashenko up to his ears. We should be doing something about him, and he should be on a list. Are the Government arranging to speak to the leader of the opposition in Belarus, who was due to meet the Foreign Secretary a couple of weeks ago, although the meeting had to be postponed? Is there going to be an urgent meeting in which they might be able to discuss what is taking place? There have been enforced deportations and tortures; are the Government considering a country referral to the International Criminal Court? Has the—
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I am afraid time is running out, and there are two further questioners.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]
My Lords, the Foreign Secretary had a useful, positive discussion with opposition leader Svetlana Tsikhanovskaya on 1 February. The Minister for European Neighbourhood and the Americas also spoke to her on 17 September last year. In relation to future sanctions, the UK uses sanctions as part of a broader political strategy—a comprehensive approach encompassing the full range of diplomatic actions. Of course, we continue to assess the impact, effects and appropriateness of that strategy against those objectives.
Integrated Review: Development Aid
Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab) [V]
I join today’s repeated expressions of total dismay. I too am sad that Lord Judd, my mentor and great friend of many years, is not here to make one of his impassioned speeches. He is a great loss.
Two questions underpin this debate. Why was there no proper evaluation of the impact of this reduction beforehand? Or was there? Can the Minister help us? No business enters into some new policy or new programme of any kind without a risk assessment. Was this not done? Secondly, why do it at all? That question was raised earlier. I am afraid that I see it as a display of rather unpleasant populist politics, with the dog-whistle message that charity begins at home. There has been no explanation to the public that the best way to create our own security in a globalised world is to prevent the blowback that comes from failing to help the poor, underdeveloped nations, riven with conflict and disease and suffering the worst effects of climate change. Conflict, poverty and persecution are why mass migration is an increasingly serious issue for the West.
This is not just about money. The UK’s expertise has led the world. DfID knew how to do development and understood that institution-building is the foundation of real change. I have seen it first hand in my own work on the rule of law. Helping draw up law to end child marriage and FGM, which has a huge impact on infant and maternal mortality; working on programmes of police and judicial training; helping to establish specialist courts to deal with gender-based violence; training prosecutors in sexual violence in conflict; working on the law on anti-corruption; developing legal systems and media freedom—all those things are done by the UK using our money in the interests of developing nations.
Development requires a package of overlapping mechanisms. That means fostering democracy, human rights and open government. This is soft power, and it works. How could we possibly think of sacrificing it? I hope the Government reconsider.
Hong Kong: Pro-Democracy Campaigners
Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of reports that pro-democracy campaigners have been sentenced in Hong Kong for participating in pro-democracy protests.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, we are clear that the Hong Kong authorities’ decision to target leading pro-democracy figures for prosecution is unacceptable and must stop. The right to peaceful protest is fundamental to Hong Kong’s way of life, protected in both the joint declaration and the Basic Law, and it should be upheld. We shall continue to raise our concerns with the Chinese and Hong Kong Governments and bring together our international partners to stand up for the people of Hong Kong.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his continued efforts in this regard, but is he aware of the letter sent last week by the last Governor of Hong Kong, the noble Lord, Lord Patten, and signed by 100 parliamentarians from both Houses, including the shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy and myself? We urged the Government to impose Magnitsky sanctions on officials in Beijing and Hong Kong for the grave and repeated breaches of the Sino-British joint declaration and the serious human rights violations committed in Hong Kong. In the light of the sentencing of some of the most prominent moderate, mainstream, internationally respected and senior pro-democracy campaigners, is it not time to impose Magnitsky sanctions?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness on the issue of the increasing number of convictions. At the end of last week, further action was taken by the Hong Kong authorities against people who are simply calling on their rights to protest and to democracy. The noble Baroness knows what I will say about speculation on future Magnitsky sanctions, but, as we have demonstrated in the case of Xinjiang, we have acted, and when we have we have done so in co-ordination with our partners.
China: Convictions of Democracy Campaigners in Hong Kong
Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
On the general thrust of the noble Lord’s suggestions, I assure him once again that we are not just working directly in raising these issues with the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities but are also doing it on a range of different issues with our key partners, including the United States and European Union.
On the ICJ, the noble Lord will be aware that the application of any decision of the ICJ requires the agreement of both parties. I suggest that in this instance China may not agree with any decision taken at that level. We are keeping the situation, which is fluid, under review to see what further steps we can take.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
My Lords, may I first take this opportunity to thank the Minister. Within hours of discovering that I had been sanctioned by the Chinese for my work in this House and beyond in relation to the gross human rights abuses perpetrated by the Chinese Government against the Uighurs and the people in Hong Kong, he was a great support.
Can the Minister say whether the decision by the Chinese Government to sanction UK parliamentarians and convict—as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Jordan—decent, good pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong will finally lead to the announcement of Magnitsky sanctions on Hong Kong officials? They are clearly responsible for the dismantling of the city’s autonomy and for covering up human rights abuses.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
I am sure I speak for every Member of your Lordship’s House in paying tribute to the noble Baroness and other parliamentarians, as well as others outside Parliament, who continue to raise their voices in the interests of the Uighur community within China.
On the noble Baroness’s specific points about Magnitsky sanctions, while I cannot speculate, recently we have taken specific steps against those operating in Xinjiang, as I am sure the noble Baroness acknowledges. As I said earlier to the noble Lord, Lord Jordan, we continue to see what further steps we may take.
Human Rights Update
Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con) [V]
Again, as the noble and right reverend Lord acknowledged, the Government have rightly consistently called out human rights abuses, not just in the situation he described but elsewhere in the world. On sanctions specifically, as I have indicated, a process is followed to ensure that the sanctions we impose are evidence-based and robust. We will continue to act. We do not shy away. Many rightly challenged us for a number of months that we were not acting on sanctioning figures from China. We have done so, and China is a major world power. We have not shied away from our moral responsibility in this respect. The fact that we have acted with 30 other countries demonstrates the will of the international community.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
My Lords, I too welcome this important collaboration with many partners and the creation of these targeted sanctions. I will speak specifically about our embrace of targeted sanctions. Is the Foreign Office engaging with countries that so far do not have targeted sanctions as part of their regimes for dealing with human rights abusers and things such as genocide? The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, asked about the absence of some of our Five Eyes partners from the coalition of targeted sanctions announced in this last day. The reality is that Australia, for example, does not have a targeted sanctions regime. Are we persuading other democracies to take on board this great new development in international law? It gives teeth to international law in a situation where one cannot get people before international courts.
I will also pick up on the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. Targeted sanctions must be used in a very strategic way. To go after lesser persons is not using the regime in the way that it was supposed to be used. For example, the United States of America has on its list the governor of Xinjiang province, Mr Chen Quanguo. Why do we not have him on our sanctions list? He has been sanctioned by the United States; why not by us?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con) [V]
I pay tribute to the work that the noble Baroness has done in the context of media freedom and the coalition. The independent legal panel has produced some excellent reports in that respect, including on the use of sanctions. The short answer is that we are speaking to other key partners, specifically some of those she mentioned, to see how we can share our experiences so that they can bring about their own sanctions regimes.
On the specifics of future people who may be sanctioned, it would be mere speculation, but I assure the noble Baroness that we remain very firm on working and sharing evidence with our partners in this respect. We have worked very closely with the United States in particular on these issues and we will continue to do so.
Hong Kong: Democracy Movement
Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord is right to point to the recent announcement made by the National People’s Congress of China, to which I have already referred. Following the current session, we expect the deliberations and debates to finish around 11 March. The next step will be for the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress to formally enact the changes at a subsequent meeting. While there has been media reporting, no specific details have yet been put forward. These proposals are in draft and, while no decisions are being taken, we are monitoring the situation closely.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his answer to my noble friend Lady Mallalieu to her question in relation to our judges and their participation in the highest court in Hong Kong. Are the Government aware of the recent decision in the case of Jimmy Lai, where his refusal for bail went all the way to the highest court, and a decision was made that no law in Hong Kong has more meaning than the Chinese national security law which has been passed? The national security law is superior to any law, be it common law or international law, in Hong Kong. Should this not be the turning point in urging our judiciary to think again?
Hong Kong: National Security Law
Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con) [V]
The continued suppression of the right to protest and a real decrease in the rights to representation, through the actions against the legislative body and indeed the recent Acts and arrests, have been increasingly evident in Hong Kong. We will certainly look at Magnitsky sanctions in their broadest sense. I cannot speculate on the specifics, as the noble Lord will appreciate, but the UK has been clear that—whether in terms of a suspension of the extradition treaty or the imposition of an arms embargo—we are taking a comprehensive look to ensure that those who suppress the rights of the people of Hong Kong are dealt with in a manner reflective of the values that we stand for.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I entirely support all that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said about the concerning situation in Hong Kong. I am glad to hear of the Minister’s deep concerns about what has been taking place. On Monday I met Ted Hui, one of the lawmakers who has fled from Hong Kong, concerned about his safety if he remained. He has had his assets frozen by HSBC, as have his wife and parents, who fled with him into exile. Is the Minister aware of any private meetings that have taken place between his ministerial colleagues and HSBC since the bank announced its support for the national security law? Are we concerned that Beijing is co-opting banks and international companies that have strong positions here in Britain into supporting the security law and freezing the assets of people who have been arrested? What can be done with our allies—
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, the noble Baroness is taking time in this limited opportunity for other noble Lords.
Belarus: Presidential Elections
Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Sugg (Con)
My Lords, the UK has been consistent in its statements condemning the fraudulent elections and the violence by Belarusian authorities, and we called for a full investigation into the electoral human rights violations through the OSCE. The UK actually led the group which formally invoked the Moscow mechanism, which will trigger that independent investigation. I assure the noble Viscount that we will absolutely continue to stand up for the people of Belarus, in the Security Council, in the OSCE and at every opportunity we have.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab) [V]
My Lords, last night, I chaired a meeting of a number of people involved in a support committee for the Belarusian people. It was a group of lawyers and we were joined by leaders of the protest movement in Belarus and the leader of the human rights organisation there, Viasna. They strongly welcome the steps being taken by the United Kingdom. Our ambassador is a very important person in this, and has indicated that there should be support for civil society—that we in Britain should be supporting many of the organisations involved here: NGOs, independent journalists, trade unions and so on. Is resource being given to that end—to support civil society, because it is in difficulties? Will the sanctions regime that we have brought into being include sanctions against people close to the regime who have homes or resources in London, who are leading figures in the business community of Belarus, who are exporting, and so on? That is what the people of Belarus are calling for. Finally, children are being taken into state care as a way of punishing the women who are protesting. Something has to be said about the way that women are experiencing particular kinds of punishment, too.